Fan activities applied to online university education

• The presentation discusses a possible way of adapting internet fan activities to the academic level online education. At the Dalarna University (Sweden), which is specialized in online education, there was a three-year project called “Informal Learning Environment”, which explored the educational aspects of fan activities, and the possible ways to apply them in language (French, German, Japanese, Portuguese) and literature courses.The educational effects of fan activities are mentioned by various authors (e.g. James Paul Gee), and we focused on two activities, Fan Fiction and Scanlation.In the Fan Fiction exercise, the students in French and German Literature had an introduction on Fan Fiction, then were asked to choose one of the literary works studied during the semester, and write a short fictional story based on it. Each student uploaded his/her text to the learning platform and then received peer-feedback from others.In the Scanlation exercise, a group work was designed for the Translation course (Japanese-English translation). Students formed groups of threes and fours and each group translated two different chapters from Shisso Nikki, a manga by Hideo Aduma. They had two weeks to work together, and then the translations were uploaded to the learning platform. Each student then gave comment and feedback to the chapters translated by other groups.In all courses, students were asked to evaluate the activities afterwards. The evaluation focused on if they enjoyed the activity, what they learned, and what the peer-feedback meant to them. Since we teach only online courses, the web-based interaction becomes very central. This is also the case in fan communities. Therefore, our hypothesis is that connecting fan activities with web-based teaching may be a way to develop and improve the formal academic learning environment.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Kulturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Cultural Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Fan Fiction

Scanlation

Online University Education

Interkulturella studier

Intercultural Studies

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)